


the earth and the sky could never be

by orphan_account



Category: Percy Jackson and the Olympians - Rick Riordan
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-28
Updated: 2014-08-28
Packaged: 2018-02-15 04:32:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 631
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2215944
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>again, liz and i were talking about pjo but THIS time it was about otherkin demigods, and also thalzoe, and otherkin thalzoe. i love it, also #death tw if you didnt see that before</p>
            </blockquote>





	the earth and the sky could never be

**Author's Note:**

  * For [epoenine](https://archiveofourown.org/users/epoenine/gifts).



It took the journey back to the Hunters for her thoughts to seep in.

Zoe was dead.

She had seen it, she had seen the way her body lay rigid in Artemis's arms- the way Thalia wanted to reach out, to hold her- the way Zoe had gripped her hand and asked for apologies, the way she agreed without understanding.

The way Thalia saw her love reform as a twinkling pattern of stars, something that looked so unfinished and incomplete, as compared to how Zoe had been in life.

But the Earth and the Sky could never be.

She remembered how, late at night when the others lay asleep, Zoe would put out the fire and they would talk.

Zoe would share her vision of her breath leaving her body, of being destroyed by her father's hand. She would share how she felt – how she felt she was not truly of earth, that she belonged in the sky, as a star or a comet.

Thalia nodded, and after some urban dictionary searches she found the word Zoe was looking for.

Otherkin.

That fit Zoe. Zoe was an other, a being not quite of this planet. She was something so beautiful, no word really fit her. Thalia tentatively would say that she, too, felt not quite human, how she felt that she belonged as a part of the earth, she belonged as the soil and the trees and a part of nature.

Zoe took her hand that awful night, and murmured. “But the Earth and the Sky could never be.”

Thalia threw up behind a pillar on Olympus after the Winter Council, without Zoe's strong yet soft hands to hold back her hair, or Zoe supply water to rinse her mouth.

She hated Atlas, more then anyone. She hated him more then Luke or Kronos or hell, even Gaea. Thalia hated him, what he had done to Zoe, what he had made of Zoe.

Every night, Thalia set an imaginary arrow into her bow and shot at the sky, listening to the satisfying thwap as string hit air. 

Every night, Thalia would study her puffy eyes in the mirror and wipe off the excess makeup. Zoe always said she looked better with a more simple look.

Every time there was a successful kill, Thalia removed the silver circlet that marked her as Artemis's lieutenant and kissed it, then set it back onto her head. It was slightly too small, made to fit Zoe's petite skull, and Thalia knew that Zoe was the true owner.

She shouldn't have been wearing it.

Every time Thalia stood in a monster's pool of blood, she felt a gust of warm air that smelled like cinnamon sugar and melted butter breeze past her.

Every time Nico di Angelo shared news of the dead, she secretly yearned that Zoe would contact her.

Every time she sat in the front seat of a car, she thought about how well Zoe could drive, how Zoe would play classical music and call it modern, how Zoe would explain to Thalia what she was doing as she drove, how Zoe kept the battered Mickey Mouse bobblehead that Thalia dug out of the dirt one day for her suction-cupped to the dashboard. 

But the Earth and the Sky could never be.

Zoe was hard to describe, Thalia thought, as she sat in the snow one morning, watching the sun rise over New York. She was really something, something so pure and ethereal simply being with her took your breath away.

As dawn broke over the city, she watched Zoe's stars run farther into the sky.

Away from Earth.

Away from Thalia.

She reached out her frost-bitten hands to grab them.

Come back.

Come back.

But the Earth and the Sky could never be.


End file.
